2025 Best Practice Guide
Raising Standards

Elevate Your Career with The Forum’s 
Professional Accreditation

Gain recognition through your development

    Why Accreditation Matters?
    Accreditation from The Forum Learning Academy demonstrates your commitment to excellence, innovation, and lifelong learning. Whether you're at the foundational level or an industry leader, each accreditation level signals your credibility, capability, and impact.

    Professional accreditation is important because it validates expertise, drives growth, and builds both personal and organisational credibility.

    Our responsibility is to make learning easy, it’s your responsibility is to own your own learning. The Forum’s Best Practice Programme, Learning Offering and Awards support your year-round learning.

    You can gain accreditation from your learning by completing this form.
    Keep updating this as you learn through the year so you can be reaccredited each year.
    Your Compass: Navigating Your Career
    Accreditation provides direction, pointing you towards the skills, behaviours, and opportunities that will move you forward. From Foundation Professional to Forum Fellow, each level marks a milestone on your journey, giving you clarity about where you are and where to head next.

    Your Tracker: Measuring Learning & Growth
    Learning doesn’t count until it’s applied. Accreditation works like a fitness tracker for your professional development: you log activities, reflect on what you’ve learned, and most importantly, record what you’re doing differently. Reaccreditation each year ensures you stay current, disciplined, and continuously improving.

    Your Licence: Validating & Building Confidence
    Accreditation is your licence to operate at the highest standards. It validates your ability, builds trust with colleagues and stakeholders, and gives you the confidence of external recognition. It shows you’re not just learning for yourself but also making a difference for your organisation and the wider profession.

    Accreditation is your ongoing commitment to raising standards, identifying opportunities and tracking your impact over time.

    Why Get Accredited?

    Hear from Chris Rainsforth, Director at The Forum on the benefits of Accreditation and how you can achieve this.

    Four levels recognise each stage of your professional career

    Forum Fellow - Role Model
    With wide experience at a very senior level in your profession and a track record of excellence, innovation, customer focus and effective business contribution, fellows are recognised outside the organisation, as actively sharing and adopting best practice, passionately building the profession. By invitation only; nominations welcome.
    Accredited Specialist Professional - Share
    Effective and takes initiative in a wide range of tasks, using insight and experience to make recommendations and engage stakeholders at many levels. Passionate about improvements taking advantage of qualifications or other learning opportunities, building your professional network and contributing in discussion or hosting events.
    Accredited Professional Member - Participate
    Recognised internally and externally as an expert, a role model for your profession, confident on complex or strategic tasks and taking judgements in sensitive areas. With qualifications or deep experience, you will be actively developing the profession, contributing to push the boundaries of good practice and invited to speak, write or moderate discussions.
    Accredited Foundation Professional - Learn
    Takes personal responsibility in your role, with the skills to perform required tasks to a good level and contribute ideas to support continuous improvement. Passionate about your profession and your own development as a professional, regularly taking steps to learn from other organisations and build your own capabilities.  

    How to gain Accreditation

    At The Forum you can become Accredited through our Learning Academy or Best Practice events programme as outlined below:-
    Learning Academy
    Within the Learning Academy, we can now accredit you as a professional when you complete modules or courses, revisiting this each year as part of your personal or corporate learning and development plan.
    • Complete 5 modules or one of our curated Boxsets to gain Foundation Accreditation
    • Complete the 6-month Assisted Learning Pathways programme to gain Specialist Accreditation
    Best Practice Events Programme
    If you attend and participate at our events or get involved with the community, there is an opportunity to get accredited at Foundation level by sharing the learning you take from these. Examples of this would be attending virtual networking groups, being actively involved at 
    in-person or virtual conferences or assisting/talking to other members on a 1-2-1 basis.
    • All in-person events now offer the opportunity to get accredited by completing a simple online virtual learning log through the day
    • Virtual events will also offer the same opportunity with 5 sessions needing to be attended and learning log returned
    The simple Learning Log form can be completed as you attend events.
    Examples of Accreditation Pathways
    • John attends one of our full day in-person conferences and completes the online learning log across the day and submits this at the end of the day. Foundation Accreditation issued subject to review of the learning log
    • Alice attends 2 sessions at one of the virtual conferences then attends 2 virtual networking groups along with viewing a webinar. She submits her Learning Log for these events and Foundation Accreditation issued subject to review of the learning log
    • Mohamed has completed 2 learning modules then attends 2 sessions at one of the virtual conferences and 1 virtual networking group. He submits his Learning Log for these events and Foundation Accreditation issued subject to review of the learning log
    The simple Learning Log form can be  completed as you have some new learning. We will keep the record of each update you send.
    A bespoke route for Accredited Specialists or Professional Members is also available for highly experienced practitioners, which combines conference, learning, networking or online engagement in The Forum each year, with activities outside in other networks. Get in touch if you want to consider this. You will need 10 modules or accredited activities, each year, and external validation, usually as part of our best practice events. Suggestions for Fellow are invited from experienced practitioners, they are appointed at our flagship conferences.
    Find out more

    Contact Us

    If you would like to know more around our accreditation programme  please contact us:
    Alison Conaghan – Customer Operations Specialist
    t: 07468 511 523
     
    or

    The Forum - Advice
    t: 0333 123 5960